The Métis people of the Lake Superior front originated in the intimate relations of French Fur Traders with Aboriginal women along the great Canadian canoe route to the Northwest. These marriages according to the customs of the country produced children who often found themselves between the cultures of their fathers and mothers and thus came to see themselves as a "New Nation."

The French fur trade was carried on at the present location of Thunder Bay as early as 1679 when Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, "King of the Coureurs de Bois" established a trading post at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River, and to that point he attracted tribes who lived hundreds of miles away in the forests and on the prairies. A former bodyguard of King Louis of France, he died and was buried with great acclaim in Montreal in February, 1710.

Métis people in this area are the descendants of the original employees of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company working at Fort William as well as other posts. They are considered the first permanent settlers of the Thunder Bay Region. They are also known as members of a group who chose to remain associated with the district as whole, who traveled between the various posts of the area to work. Many of them remained for long periods of time at one post, where their families were inevitably raised, and whose children intermarried.

Métis people continued as a prominent part of the population during the first decades after confederation (1867) with settlements on the Kaministiquia River across from West fort and on Thunder Bay between McVicar Creek and the Current River.

This is a typical Métis clap board house. Red Sky Métis Archives

The Red Sky Métis Independent Nation people possess a strong sense of shared identity and an exclusive territorial base comprised of Treaty Right lands located in the Robinson 1850 Treaties areas and beyond, reflecting their their well-documented history as an indigenous Euro-Aboriginal fur trading nation established throughout the territories of New France, part of which became Lower Canada (later Quebec) and Upper Canada (later Ontario), and extending across the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi valley as far south as Louisiana.

Our history and culture is celebrated in the traditions and songs of the Great Rendezvous, chronicled in the annals of the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company and occupies an uncontested, pre-eminent position in the historical record of the founding of Thunder bay, Gateway to the West.

It unites the traditions of the people of New France and English Canada with that of our Aboriginal mothers into a distinct and vibrant Métis culture. We are the voice of the Métis people of the Red Sky Métis Independent Nation whose ancestors the Coureurs de Bois, the first colonists - the French Voyageurs, settled this area and brought Canada to the attention of the World as a land of unsurpassed natural wealth and unparalleled opportunity.

The Métis employees of the fur trading companies, which included the two half-breed sons of William McGillivray, Lord of the North West, and Susan, their Indian mother, laid the foundation for a fur trade empire which in time reached from the "Lakes of Canada to the Pacific Ocean and the Frozen or Polar Sea."

William McGillivray became Chief Director of the North West Company in 1799. This represented a rise from a green apprentice-clerk to the highest position in the firm, in the space of 15 years. His ambitious rise to a position of influence was matched by the public esteem of Louis Denis de Laronde, "the Baron of Lake Nipigon," a well-known Coureur de Bois, who in 1800 handed over his interests to the North West Company.

From the Red Sky Métis Achieves

It was through the efforts of adventurous men like de Laronde and McGillivray, who were driven by the promise of wealth "beyond the realm of usury," that the trade frontier was more influential than the settlements frontier in the formation of Canada. The offspring of de Laronde includes Métis Chief Roy de La Ronde, head of the Red Sky Métis Independent Nation.

In recognition of William McGillivray’s contributions to the development of the North West, the Ontario Government Department of Archives has erected a plaque celebrating his memory. It has stood for several years in Vickers Park in Fort William and will be moved and re-installed in a position of prominence in Thunder Bay McGillivray Square.

The council of the Red Sky Métis Independent Nation are spearheading efforts to obtain similar public recognition of the contributions of the French Métis. The French Métis and their Scottish counterparts provided the "economic engine" that conquered half a continent. Together they built up a commercial empire the like of which North America had never seen. Council members believe that the role of their status Métis foreparents as nation builders should be celebrated by all Canadians.